


A Guilty Conscience Needs No Accuser

by Abyssiniana



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 80's AU, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Time, M/M, Masturbation, Monster Anatomy, Oni!Shiro, Shiro (Voltron) Has a Large Cock, background allurance, human!keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 11:24:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21074111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssiniana/pseuds/Abyssiniana
Summary: “Blood was shed and I was summoned,”the monster repeated slowly, voice unmuffled and clearer, though the teeth poking from his lower jaw made the words a little harder to pronounce. Their eyes met in a clicking thunderstorm, a knot being tied as their bond was sealed. “I am an oni.”___Piece I wrote for the digital bonus zine ofShape of Sheith: A Monster Sheith zine.





	1. I.

** _I._ **

“You sure about this, kid?” The smirk behind the question was unsettling enough to infuse second thoughts in those weaker at heart. 

But Keith Kogane did not fit into the category of panicky cowards.

“Just get on with it,” he urged, tongue swirling around the stick that used to hold a cherry flavored lollipop until a few hours ago. It tasted like faint plastic after so long and he grew tired of gnawing on it. So he threw it to the bucket that served as a garbage can in the corner of the room. “I want it on the back of my neck.”

The tattoo parlor, with faulty neon signs by the roadside, wasn’t the healthiest looking of places. But for it to be open at three in the morning, it was honestly just as Keith expected. The tattoo artist, of undeniable Asian descent, was plausibly high on something Keith couldn’t distinguish by smell or physical symptoms, but he didn’t quite care either. The man seemed pretty capable and somehow remembered to sterilize the materials while Keith picked out a generic design from a portfolio. It wasn’t that big of a deal anyway; just a tattoo. Not his first, not his second, just an excuse to cover the blank spot behind his neck. 

“And...  _ this _ is the design you want?” The cranky Asian man frowned at the drawing on the paper — one of his own designs — as if he had never seen it before. It was a bold demon looking thing with thick lines that were bound to sting with every poke of the needle. But by browsing through the artist’s walk-in portfolio, said design had been the only one that looked badass enough to earn a spot on the back of his neck. It would be the piece on his body that would be the most visible. Keith was somehow drawn to it. He wasn’t about being picky or anything, but he liked his ink to have a meaning beyond vague aesthetic. This one… He hadn’t quite decided what it would mean to him but the fact that it stared right back at him with sharp yellow eyes set in red skin with a sword held horizontally between jagged teeth, wild black hair fanning out from the sides of its face made him… want it. It screamed at Keith in a language he didn’t understand.

_ This one. For sure, _ he had thought, running his fingers over the image of some sort of ancient Japanese mask, with little pink flowers, wicked smile and pointy horns. It was almost comical, this new design, but simultaneously fearless and attractive. It spoke of spirituality, of protection, and of a deeper type of connection he couldn’t fully understand.

Plus… He always did like red.

It didn’t match the American traditional sparrows on his hips; nor the dagger in the same style on his ribs; or the wide rose on the right side of his chest. He had never quite seen anything like it. Except perhaps the oriental style tattoos that completely covered the artist’s arms: audacious dragons, severed women’s heads with knives on their foreheads, a scaly fish with amazing precision and evenness. But he was sure the meaning would come with time. This was the tattoo for him.

“Yeah. That’s what I told you,” Keith shrugged. He didn’t expect to be met with more silence. “... Can you do it?”

“Of course I can. I am a professional.” His oriental accent came through in a broken, defensive cadence, but faded between syllables just as quickly as it was implied. “I haven’t done this one on skin before, but it’s no challenge for me. On the back of your neck, you said? Lay down and move your hair. Tie it up if you can.”

Keith nodded, stripping off his T-shirt and combing his mullet to the side rather than using the elastic band he wore on his wrist. He laid on the cushioned chair, which surprisingly smelled of disinfectant, so there was that.

“Whatever happens, you didn’t get this piece from me...” The artist laughed under his breath, shaking his head in dark amusement. The atmosphere became heavy as his shadow was cast over his canvas’ back. Keith tensing up with caution. “ _ Kokoro no oni ga mi wo semeru, _ ” the creep whispered, just before the needle was lowered onto Keith’s nape. 

_ What was that about? _

The regular pressure of the sting and the buzzing of the needle came as a blanket, an odd form of comfort in the permanent kneading of his skin as the lines were traced with an expertise and precision he couldn’t deny. Yes, the man was intoxicated, possibly delusional, but in less than three hours he had made the sickest piece of ink Keith had ever seen.

“That’s rad, man,” he said, inspecting the piece with a hand mirror. In it he also saw the reflecting first rays of sun peeking through the window of the establishment. “Thanks.”

* * *

As much as Keith thought the artist deserved the monetary compensation for his beautiful work, he didn’t complain when he got to keep those extra forty bucks weighing on his thin wallet. His parting words had been something along the lines of, “you’ll pay for it eventually, and it’ll have nothing to do with me.” What a cryptic dude. 

With that kind of cash he could afford food for the rest of the month. With that thought in mind, he walked to the only place with a meal of questionable nutrition at six in the morning; a gas station. Chips, soda, and something to go with it would do just fine. Or at least until he got home, rested some, and woke up just before the sunset. Then he should be able to visit a grocery store and actually buy himself something decent.

He could even buy enough ingredients to cook something, for once; the  _ luxury _ .

The station was on the way to his place. He took a few shortcuts known only by those born and raised in the city. As he was about to take a turn, a pair of leather clad ruffians walked by and the tallest of them bumped his arm.

“Watch it,  _ punk _ ,” Keith heard, which had him glaring over his shoulder. These good for nothing thugs thought they were so great, in their leather realness and unsustained superiority. As usual, he was planning to move on and ignore, but a hand on his shoulder halted him in his steps. 

“Ye not gonna apologize?” the thug laughed, as if entitled to anything at all.

“Why should  _ I _ ? You bumped into me.”

“Oh, a smartass, uh?” The thug rubbed his nose on the back of his hand before spitting his chewing gum to the ground; a waste of a perfectly chewable treat for the sake of a dramatic effect that didn’t land. Keith blinked, unimpressed, as the stranger, all dyed spiky hair, pierced lip, and bad boy attitude, cracked his knuckles. “I'mma show you why you should  _ respect _ me.”

He raised his arms defensively to brace himself from an incoming punch as the thug pulled his fist back, but the hit never came. When Keith opened his eyes again, he saw the pair of ruffians shivering on the concrete, eyes wide and disoriented, mouths agape and shuddering. The closest lamppost flickered briefly over two boys who looked too small for the shoulder pads on their jackets as they both scrambled away without looking back.

“A-A demon!! It’s a motherfucking demon!” they yelled out of tune, scattering from each other in different directions.

Well, that was something he had never been called before; for Keith it was just messy hair, an old jacket with patches that needed some restitching and a pair of compression gloves, but whatever suited those assholes—

The wind felt heavier close to his ear and he spun where he stood with his fists up, eyes darting from side to side in alarm.

Aside from a stray cat hunting for breakfast inside trash cans in its elegant homelessness, the alleyway tunneled to an empty street of parked muscle cars. No people, no... “demons” whatsoever. Unless the cat’s suspiciously wide eyes counted as a supernatural presence. The animal hissed at nothing and sprinted under a wire fence.

Lowering his guard with quickly fading hesitance, Keith stuffed his hands in his pockets with a sigh, turning to resume his way to the store. Keith knew there would come a day when he wouldn’t be as lucky as to avoid an ugly alleyway fight with strangers. One day a surprise wrench or a crowbar would hit him from behind, he would see some constellations he had never seen before dancing in his vision before he fell face first on the sidewalk and everything turned black. That day he would learn the hard, permanent way, that immortality was a fantasy.

But as the idiots ran for dear life, black shadows against a lazy, melancholic sunrise, Keith realized that that day was a long way ahead.

  
_ Demon _ , he snorted, shaking his head and pushing the glass door open with his side,  _ Yeah right. _


	2. II.

The vacant bus took him to a part of town he rarely visited and he hopped off at the end of the route, throwing a wave at the driver.

Keith was more than used to stubbing his toe on the bedside table or stepping on a loose nail on the wooden flooring of his bedroom. His fingers had small scars from getting them caught in the toaster every morning and the top of his head sported bruises from the hinged hoods of cars at work (not to mention the time he got too close to a steaming hot camshaft and got his face burned). He had a few scraps on his knees from tripping over his undone shoelaces because he was too busy noticing the random patterns of a bubblegum stained sidewalk.

To put it simply, Keith had always had rotten luck and almost always it would result in physical —  _ painful _ — consequences. But as of lately…

A fist fight brought him no harm; a cut didn’t sink into his flesh; a burn was so brief that it didn’t even have a chance to leave a mark; too many days had flown by without an accident at  _ Marmora’s Motor Repairs _ and it felt like more than just a pinch of luck.

Keith was by no means a masochist but the pain was a warning, a ringing trigger of the fight or flight response. An injury was never wanted and he hardly craved for it, but the aching was grounding in a way. It would force him to focus and prepare him for whatever was to come. Without it he was unaware, lost, helpless.

After a few minutes of walking, unsettled desert dust clinging to his boots, he stopped at the doorstep of a house he knew he didn’t have to knock on to be welcomed in.

There was some bat shit crazy stuff going on, which had him resorting to the most desperate of measures. If anyone could help him figure out what was happening, it’d be  _ her _ . It wasn’t often that he found himself seeking out the fortune teller; matters of cosmos and stellar bodies were fascinating in their own way, but a little too powerful of a force to be meddled with. 

He could hear the thick accent behind the words hastily written on a paper note, taped to the aluminium door: “Back Soon!!” with a few quick doodles of planets and stars. Anyone who didn’t know better would wait, or come back later, but knowing Allura as Keith did, that paper would be at least a week old. He turned the knob and dodged through the hanging plastic beads, the crystal curtain closing behind him as he entered the small fortune telling room decorated with heavy purple tapestries, framed esoteric illustrations and a bunch of items he’d rather not mess with.

“Allura?” His voice was loud enough to be heard within a close radius but not enough to be considered rude. 

“Keith!” A voice with a hint of surprise, and a head with messy silver hair poked from behind a door Keith didn’t know existed, Allura’s shoulders bare and arm covering her chest. “Wait a little, I’ll be right with you!”

_ Is that Keith?! What does he want?! _

While Allura proceeded to explain to a whiny Lance on the other side of the wall that she had no idea why their friend was visiting without notice, it didn’t take too much to figure out Keith had interrupted something. He was about to leave, when a figure in a mirror caught the corner of his eye.

When Keith turned, he saw nothing, and looking back at the round mirror to see  _ only  _ his own reflection staring back at him had him feeling like more of an idiot. Whatever little his mind could retain of that image, it felt…familiar. Like he had seen it before and then forgotten about it, over and over.  _ Argh _ , he groaned, rubbing his eyes with the balls of his wrists.

_ Was he truly going mad…? _

Before long, Allura glided into the room wearing an expensive looking robe that fit her like royalty — undoubtedly the first thing she had hastily gotten her hands on — and she sat on the velvet cushioned chair behind the table, a small throne that had her name all over it.

“Well then, sit down! What’s troubling you? Want some tea?”

Keith should have said yes to the tea offer, even though he was more of a coffee lover. He should have apologized for bursting in without letting them know and taken the time to catch up with Allura and Lance. He should have been a good friend instead of a desperate, maddened version of himself. Instead, he gathered a breath before wordlessly sitting across from her and extending his palm facing up.

Allura, an enchantress of sorts, had a gift, and as skeptical as Keith tried to be, he had witnessed her power on other people. Predictions, undisclosed secrets, promises... There was always something to be found in the little infinity of someone’s palm and she was bloody great at it. If anyone would be able to figure out the bane cast upon his existence, it would be her.

“This is going to sound completely bonkers, but I think I’ve been cursed?” He began in an attempt to sum up the events of the past days; or rather, the lack of events altogether. “I can’t… hurt myself. I mean— Nothing  _ gets _ to hurt me! It’s like I’ve been covered in bubble wrap and no harm can come to me.”

“That’s...usually not something to complain about, Keith—”

“Please, just…look into this.”

She leaned closer with grace and understanding, her hand hovering and tracing, reading and learning, absorbing and gathering.

“Keith, I…” The fortune teller — read, the  _ absolute _ last resort in the hierarchy of Keith’s mind — squinted at the palm of his hand, tracing the paths of life and fate, a strand of her impossibly light hair distracting her from the task by slipping from behind her ear, pierced in several spots with golden bits of jewelry. “... I have no idea what you’re hoping for me to find here.”

“Anything!” he demanded, leg bouncing under a circular table, covered in a velvety cloth.

In the claustrophobic space of Allura’s consulting office, his palm was still turned upwards on the table, almost like a pianist with thin, bony fingers, delicate if not for the old scars across his skin and the motor oil underneath his nails.

“There must be something! Some jinx or a curse?”

Upon his insistence, Allura brought his hand under the warm ceiling light again, silence crushing the space between them for a lengthy minute or two. “Not a curse…a memory. Time that’s passed, over and over, and it returns to complete another cycle.” Words that meant little to him. He could see the veins on his wrist helplessly pumping along with his heart with the imminence of an arrhythmic consequence. She sighed and shook her head while Keith held his breath for no reason at all. “Hardly any more than that, however…I’m sorry.”

“Ugh.”

Okay, so Allura couldn’t help. A waste of time to come to her little bazar, getting high on some exotic incense rather than obtaining the answers he sought. Perhaps he should have simply headed down to a mental asylum and checked himself in for an eternal vacation, because he was falling down a rabbit hole of insanity and there was no way back up.

“Maybe try the cards?” he suggested with a desperate shrug and she laughed. “Some sort of magical incense that’ll illuminate me?”

“Keith.” Her tone was sincere, coated in a kindness Keith didn’t think he deserved. “Sometimes the Universe decides that one single person has had enough bad things happening to them, you know?”

He mused on those words for a few seconds. Life had never been easy, but he never thought it was supposed to be. Pop died too early for a child to accept and Keith had never met his mother; as far as it concerned him, she was dead too. There was no more family, except maybe Pidge, the genius brat from the arcade. And arguably that idiot Lance and Hunk too. The last two had been with Keith since his high school days and Allura showed up some time later, first as Lance’s mystical unattainable love interest and then surprisingly, as his actual significant other. How such a dumb kid had convinced someone of Allura’s caliber with serenades and roses, Keith would never know. But they did make each other better.

Keith had never graduated, but managed to find a good enough job at a garage after a few months of drifting aimlessly in the desert. Not his dream job — much less with that entitled dickhead of a boss who seemed to hate him — but he was good at it. No question. Pop had taught him all he needed to know about motors and tires and tubes during summers spent under the draining Arizona sun in an attempt to fix a dead van that never actually ran.

Life was…never that kind for anyone. In a small town in the middle of the Arizona desert, misfortune wasn’t something you could simply run “out” of. Being used to disappointment, the only outcome he could predict from the lack of misfortune was that something BIG was coming; bigger than ever before. Something so fucked up that would utterly destroy him beyond repair. It wasn’t that he feared the end — death was an old acquaintance by then — but he was not familiar with that feeling of helplessness. “Yeah, right...”

“If you didn’t believe the stars then you wouldn’t be here.” It felt like a taunt which had Keith acknowledging his friend’s point. Horoscopes and cards held more wisdom than he would dare to believe but perhaps not about this particular matter. “Or maybe it’s the stars who believe in you.”

He got up, frustration biting at his lower lip as he headed to the door. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

“Hey, Keith?” Allura called after him, her eyes leveling with Keith’s indigo colored ones in alarming caution. “I may not understand what’s going on, but…you shouldn’t question a guardian angel when you’re blessed with their protection.”

That was the closest to a “try not to get yourself killed” he would get from Allura, so he smiled and hoped it came through as enough of a “thank you” before he pulled the crystal beaded curtains apart and showed himself out. The cold of the night embraced him in an uncomfortable hold.

The path to the shop had been unsurprisingly eventless, which by then had become annoying. Never had he thought that he’d be craving for a mosquito bite or a cartoon cliché with a piano to fall on his head.

Anything to remind him that he was still alive.


	3. III.

** _III._ **

Entering his apartment — a near-rotten two story building above a pawn shop — reminded Keith of how long of a day he just had. It could have been an average Thursday, just like the others: working late at  _ Marmora’s _ , stopping by the only open fast-food restaurant at two in the morning and bringing the cheapest option on the menu in a greasy paper bag to eat at home. But who would have thought that a bit of luck would make him feel so up a creek without a paddle?

Tossing his meal to the countertop in the kitchenette, Keith considered: perhaps Allura was right and he  _ was _ , in fact, overreacting. There was nothing wrong with a little bit of sunshine; he simply wasn’t used to the light. It was certainly temporary anyhow. It shouldn’t take much longer until a karma of unfairness befell him once more.

He kicked off his boots, carelessly discarding them in the corner near the faux leather armchair, the only piece of furniture he had ever spent money on, his first salary, in fact. The rest came with the rental, in ugly striped lined covers, a thin carpet (barely a survivor from the past century) and tasteless patterned wallpaper. The shiny black stood out as a stain in the already hideous decor, but it was the only thing that matched his personality.

The thought of a cold shower crossed his mind but was delayed in favor of finally getting some food in his stomach. The drawer was opened and then closed with a jolt of his hip after a knife was retrieved from within. 

Were Lance there, he would have made a point to argue that Keith was committing a capital sin by cutting a burger in half. But what Lance refused to understand was that by doing so, Keith would be taking a bite from the center, the epitome of flavor of the chickpea patty, lettuce, tomato and the rich mushroom sauce. His mouth would be swarmed with intensity and the three dollar meal would be elevated a notch or two. It was McClain’s loss to reject the prestige of cutting burgers in half.

The blade met the sesame seed sprinkled bun, but wasn’t pushed down in a quick, clean cut. Keith held it there for a while, mind drifting to an unconventional, yet feasible curse breaker. 

It could break a whole lot of other things indeed, but it could be worth a shot. If anything, it would prove that his paranoia was unjustified, that he didn’t have some scourge cast upon him.

The sharpened edge of the knife looked inviting against the warmth of the skin of his wrist. The blue veins popped at the idea, streaming faster with the rhythm of his racing heart, reflecting on the surface of the knife.

_ Just push. Push and you’ll know for sure. _

** _“Do not do that.”_ **

Keith’s throat clogged up in panic, his breath cut and heart beat faster, or perhaps stopped completely. He heard the voice from way too close. The knife dropped from the safe and expert grip of his hand and bounced off the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Keith spun on his heels to find the source of the noise.

Nothing but the lousy excuse of a kitchen/living/bedroom space, illuminated by the street lights and the flickering lamp installed under the cupboards.

The silence was more crushing than he would’ve hoped; there was a certain degree of safety in knowing what to strike. But it didn’t take much to know that there was no way to beat a shadow.

** _“Do not be frightened,”_ ** the voice insisted, after what might have been forever.

“Who’s there?!” Keith demanded, a dark frown knitted his eyebrows together. How could he not be fucking terrified of a stranger inside his house in the middle of the night? He reached out to whatever was closest to him; a baseball bat he didn’t even know he owned but was glad to have. He held the weapon over his shoulder, defensively preparing himself to strike, should the need arise, eyes darting from side to side to cover every inch of his apartment. “Come out!”

** _“Blood was shed. I was summoned,”_ ** the shadow proclaimed, shifting ever so slightly behind the armchair. Was it… hiding? The voice was guttural, coming from deep within; Keith would’ve thought it was coming from inside his own head, had he not seen the outlines of the shadow’s mouth moving. It wasn’t too late to go to the mental hospital.  ** _“I am bound to you.”_ **

“Bound to me?” he snapped. “The fuck does that mean? Who are you?!”

He could hear breathing, a sigh. A popping sound of joints cracking, a back straightening, an impossibly white haired head materializing from thin air. The creature who rose was enormous, wide shoulders and heads taller than Keith, heavy red scaled pattern covering its only arm and part of its torso and thighs. It was hard to ascertain anything else in the scarce light of the single room apartment.

“ _ What _ are you...?” Keith repeated, words slipping through his lips in a near mute whisper. The hold on the baseball bat weakened slightly. His lips parted in wonder and surprise. There was no question that the being before him was of supernatural provenance.

** _“We are associated with evil and misdeeds. But some of us bring protection against said evils. I mean you no harm.”_ **

“Excuse me?!”

A grumble vibrated the whole room. Oh, annoyed, was it?! Keith gripped the handle of the bat a little harder, though he was fairly sure a creature of that size and strength could crush the wooden weapon in his fist without much of an effort. There was some averseness in the manner the intruder turned —  _ his right arm, it was missing? Loose bandages were scantily wrapped around a stub, occulting all that was left of a severed member _ — to face him completely.

“Step closer. Let me see you.”

There was no expectancy for the demand to be met, but the male figure did as it was told. From up close — Keith had to take a step back — he was far bigger with red tinted skin meeting a healthier looking color in the face and mid-chest. Horns poked out of his forehead, lower canines extended until they touched his upper lip. Nothing but a loin cloth covered him which was equal parts ridiculous and provocative. Scratch that, the size of those thighs alone were scary. Capable of crushing him in a bad or good way, depending on which head he imagined the scenario with. A scar cut the skin right above his nose and there were more, many more, slicing the skin where trauma had hit.

The appearance of an ogre without a shadow of doubt. The reason or the meaning behind such appearance was unknown to Keith; never had he seen—

_ Oh. _

Keith slid his hand around the back of his neck, touching the piece of art he couldn’t see without the aid of a mirror. The tattoo. The label said something like “demon”, but another word, of a deeper history, tainted with the curse of eons. 

  
“Blood was shed and I was summoned,” the monster repeated slowly, voice unmuffled and clearer, though the teeth poking from his lower jaw made the words a little harder to pronounce. Their eyes met in a clicking thunderstorm, a knot being tied as their bond was sealed. “I am an  _ oni _ .”


	4. IV.

Keith Kogane was not a coward.

There was no fight he would back down from, no enemy who wouldn't end up as broken or in worse condition than Keith himself. He was unstoppable, an incoming storm, a hurricane held back by a very thin thread, just waiting to be cut lose. He was strong, instinctive, impulsive (arguably reckless), but mostly heart driven.

That being said, there were some things he was utterly terrified of. 

“What exactly are you?” Keith asked, his legs pulled up against his chest. The  _ oni _ kept a comfortable distance between them, preferring to conceal himself out of sight, only breaking the imaginary territorial bubble when his overly-protective nature so demanded. Otherwise he was a very… respectful monster. 

“I told you already, Keith. I’m an  _ oni _ . A  _ yokai _ . A supernatural being from Japanese folklore.”

Those words were completely foreign to Keith. He had to swallow to ignore the fact that the creature knew his name, so he pressed on. “But what do you want from me? Are you going to kill me?”

The entity blinked, as if recalling the right words to explain the situation to someone who was very doltish to the whole concept of having a spiritual guardian; every sentence was thickly coated with patience, as if he had repeated the same thing over and over, time and time again.

“I am an  _ oni _ . A demon. And even though the terms ‘troll’ or ‘ogre’ are accurate, they are much less preferred. Once, those of my kind may have terrorized whole villages, created nightmares in the minds of little children, and symbolized death and destruction. But time has carved me into a protector, a ward, if you will. My duty is to protect you from whatever misfortune befalls you.”

“The image on the back of your neck was a calling; the blood you shed was an invocation. I was more than glad to oblige.” Breathing came in hiccups, confusion twisting knots inside Keith’s brain, but a solid hand on his shoulder transmitted a little more than warmth. He focused on the veins of the oni’s only hand, concentrated on how grounding and somehow intimate it felt. “I don‘t expect this to be easy for you to accept. If there’s anything I can do to assure your trust, just say the word.”

For all the red scaly markings on the monster’s thighs, his only arm, torso, and neck, for the hair gone prematurely white either with time or trauma, for all the questions Keith needed answers for, he was only able to mouth the simplest of them. “What’s your name?”

“I can’t remember.” The answer was vague and tense, but eyes with an intensity rivaling that of a typhoon gave away the iron-forged honestly.

“What should I call you then?”

Not knowing what he was dealing with was one of the scariest things for Keith Kogane.

Give him a man, he'd punch. An engine, he'd wreck it. A car or a bike? He'd melt the fucking tires on asphalt-coated road. But a spirit without a name...

“Do you expect to call my name often?”

“I’d rather be respectful about it, if I ever do.”

Keith...did not know what to do with such an entity. 

* * *

There were two sides to the coin of having a mystical bodyguard. It was as if the more Keith prepared for a catastrophe, the more curveballs were thrown at him.

Not once in his lifetime had the gas of the stove gone up with the threat of burning Keith’s face. Never had the front tire of his bike blown in the middle of the highway. Never had he lost balance in a rooftop or forgotten to look both ways before a crosswalk. Thanks to the  _ oni _ , Keith suffered no harm besides the initial hint of surprise and fear for as long as it took for his brain to compute what was happening, but the recurrence of events was becoming rather disheartening.

Anticipating misfortune only seemed to set up the perfect atmosphere to have everything go wrong. The more he prepared, the more room was made for a breach in security; lowering one’s guard is what gets people hurt. 

And the demon who haunted Keith attracted misfortune like a lamp drew a moth to its light.

It’s hard to make sense of the little figures who flew by in the corner of his eye, teasing at his periphery, but he does spot them, he shapes them as monsters in his head and he learns that his bad luck has a face to punch. He cracked his knuckles and squinted, as if that’d sharpen his senses.

“They’re demons, aren’t they?”

“Of sorts, yes.” The  _ oni _ unhelpfully shrugged, yellow sclera darting from side to side instead of focusing on the tea mug in his hands. “Little imps, more like it. Determined to be the mosquitoes in the windshield of your life.”

“How can we get rid of them?” He had attempted to reach out to the shadows —even gave the air a few swings with his bat— but there was no way to physically hit whatever beings hovered around them in occasion.

“Wait for them to attack,” he said casually, cooling the green tea with a blow before sipping on it, “and exterminate them.”

“Right...” Yeah. Sure. That almost made sense. Why should they wait around to be targeted when they could simply barge in and wreck whoever wanted to harm them?

“Unlike me, they’re not bound to this world. They’re just shy of piercing the veil between realities, clawing at it, waiting for a chance to reach out to you and attack. When they do, we strike—”

Keith gasped as a curled fist flew right in front of his eyes, passing by him like a razor sharp arrow, the sound of a crushing skull chilled his blood. Shiro had gotten up with lightning speed, smashing one of the demons against the wall nearest to where Keith stood. Were that fluid real — blood, only...iridescent, or something — it would have stained the wallpaper, but as the grotesque creature faded from existence, so did the bloody mess on the wall and all over his protector’s clawed hand.

Keith gulped and released the breath he had been holding in, indigo eyes meeting the  _ oni _ ’s own.

“Like so.”

* * *

It may have been the digital alarm, the chirping birds outside, or perhaps the sinking of the mattress to a foreign weight, but Keith woke up with a frown on his face by default. The day hadn’t even started and it was already shitty.

“You’ll be late,” the  _ oni _ warned, voice low and warm that tickled Keith all over. 

He answered against the pillow,  _ “It’s whatever.”  _

“Kolivan won’t think so.”

_ “Fuck him.” _

The oni’s lips curled in what could have been a smile to fill the silence. “May I... ask you something?”

_ “What-e-ver.”  _

The bedframe complained again at the shifting weight, as the demon repositioned himself to lay next to Keith, a clawed hand that he didn’t know could be capable of such tenderness combing the stubborn fringe back with care.

“Do I...look familiar to you?”

Keith opened one eye, mind still too hazy and still unable to fully process whatever was being said. Once again, he took in the features of the demon, the horns, the tattoos, the yellow sclera, the teeth, and his hair white as snow. In a way, the monster was handsome, but he preferred shaking that thought away. “Do you have to be so close to me?”

Keith’s question had a repelling effect; one moment he could feel the  _ oni _ ’s comfortable touch, just hovering above his face, and the next the  _ oni _ had pulled back and had gone exploring whatever corners he hadn’t yet discovered in the small room Keith lived in. His head fell back on the pillow and he nuzzled it for some extra comfort.

He was late for work.

* * *

“Can you...leave?” Keith asked one night.

“I can disappear,” the  _ oni _ offered with a shrug, while slowly turning the page of the book he was reading. “You won’t see me, but I cannot cease to be.”

It would be hypocritical of Keith to demand him to vanish when the  _ oni  _ only made himself visible and always remained within sight at Keith’s own request — so that he would never be caught unguarded. His privacy had been taken for granted before, he realized, now that he always had a silent, complex companion.

“Will you be looking at me anyway if you do?”

“Over you. But I can face the other way.”

“Oh.”

Keith just needed some time for himself. With this ink-activated protector thing going on, there was no break from each other’s presence, as dictated by the contract he signed without reading the little letters on the bottom. He simply laid awake in bed, finding the gross patterns on his ceiling much more interesting than the hard-on under the sheets.

Maybe if he stared at the stains long enough, he would eventually lose any and all sexual drive for the rest of his pitiful life. He was doomed with constant company and unable to be alone anyway. His eyes flipped back to the  _ oni _ as the being rose from a crouching position and away from the radio he had been trying to figure out. As he walked, the loincloth that only just barely covered him moved with him, granting Keith a glimpse of a pair of dangly things he wasn’t supposed to see.

_ Oh no. _ Why did he have to be hot? Keith definitely ought to lend him some type of clothing.

He wasn’t even sure what he was dealing with, in the first place. Allura had laughed at the mention of a protective Japanese deity — so much for a mystical dweller she was, not taking Keith’s anguish seriously. If anyone would understand, it should have been her.

The demon had taken her side too.  _ In this day and time, I would not have believed you either _ , he had said, face deprived of amusement.

Well, the stains weren’t doing it for him, not at all, so he groaned and turned to face the wall, eyes closed, as if to force himself to sleep.

The erotic filter of his dreams took a shape he was beginning to recognize in its own strangeness: a bulky and heavily tattooed body, hair impossibly white and exquisite facial structure. Small horns, wide and strong shoulders, a girthy, leaking volume, no longer hidden by a stubborn thin layer of fabric—  _ fuck fuck fuck, he rolled his hips against the sheets, mouth open as he gasped silently, a fist around his dick and he pumped it to the mental image _ — of the demon’s clawed hand dragging down his back, making Keith sink down on that cock— _ fucking gorgeous, wow, that’s amazing, that feels so bloody good, right there, THERE, shit! _

When Keith opened his eyes, his room illuminated by whatever light it could get from the streetlamps, he saw that the  _ oni _ looked tense, trembling fingers as he pretended to go back to the radio, in his quest to explore digital devices of the current era. His face was flustered, a bead of sweat on his forehead, big teeth sinking into his lip with more clenched force than he probably needed to keep his jaw from dropping.

Yeah. He had seen it but Keith was only half-awake and too high on his long-awaited bliss to care. Before he succumbed to sleep, the mattress sunk with the weight of the demon, a presence that for once he didn’t repel, but rather nuzzled closer to.

* * *

“You don’t remember anything from your life before?” Keith questioned.

“I don’t.” A deliberate lie, for sure.

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing that’s too relevant.” The lie felt like a thick layer of dust over things Keith should be told. Keeping things a secret shouldn’t be an option, not when their lives —or unlife— had become intertwined in a mess of red strings of fate.

From what Keith had gathered during an extensive research in the library, an  _ oni _ is born when the most wicked of humans dies and fulfills their sanction in one of the levels of Buddhist hell. It was hard to look at the giant who ran his clawed fingertips across the spines and raised bands of the lined thick books of the highest shelf and imagine him committing something atrocious enough to be punishable by the laws of religion.

_ Theft? Murder? Rape? Pillaging? _

…  _ Suicide? _

To enhance the insanity of the situation,  _ yes _ , Keith had been seeing, talking to and touching a dead person.

He had no actual idea of how the old transcripts described the Buddhist realms of Hell to be like, but he only kept that gloomy book spread open for long enough to know it wasn’t a good place to be in, each level worse and more painful than the last. With the quick reading over several volumes written by all sorts of authors, he had learnt that no story about  _ oni _ — demonic creatures from Japanese folklore — was the same, but they all made one common point crystal clear:

An  _ oni _ isn’t kind.

Glancing over the pile of books before him, it seemed almost impossible to imagine the curious, gentle being who despite being invisible to everyone else, still tried to stay out of their way for their unknowing convenience, being anything other than…  _ kind _ . 

Maybe he wasn’t an  _ oni _ after all… A guardian angel, perhaps. Or maybe Allura wasn’t so wrong and Keith was still on the line to enter some asylum on the creepy side of town. The ambiguous physical depictions in the pages before him were nothing to go by, as the facts mutated according to the authors who wrote the books.

“Y’know, these books do a better job at explaining things than you do,” Keith suggested with a little heat and a small grin. 

“Maybe the books know more than I do.”

He rolled his eyes at that; a blatant, careless lie. Maybe the demon was tired of Keith and had no interest that he’d know more about the whole situation. It was such a menace to be randomly assigned to anyone who happens to shed blood and accidentally invoke a demon. When would he leave? What would happen if he did? Would he return?

_ … Would he? _

“What if I banish you?” Keith asked, just above a whisper, more to himself than to the entity who halted his steps right behind his chair, “Like a ghost, or a banshee, or something?”

“I…don’t know.”

“How can we be sure without trying? It may work and I’m sure I’ve read it somew—” His words were silenced by the spirit’s hand over his, stopping him from reaching for the ancient looking spell book he had picked up hours ago. Keith never supposed that the touch would be warm, but it flew right through him with a promise of comfort, a physical encounter of flesh and flesh, reminding him that the being who was bound to him was very, very real. 

“Keith…I don’t know if I would want you to try,” he said with pause, working the words around the size of his underbite.

That wasn’t the first time the demon had called his name, but the emotional discharge that came with it was a little like a lightning bolt to his system. It delayed inside Keith’s head, hemorrhaging through and sinking deep into his bones and organs, ringing in his ears and stumping his tongue. For more than a short amount of time, Keith decided that he didn’t quite want the spirit to leave either.

His senses returned to him when the white haired monster —who had once been a man, apparently— stopped touching him.

“It’s getting late,” the demon provided with a tilt of his horned head towards the window that framed a pale sunset. “They should close up soon.”

“Y-Yeah.” Keith picked up his notebook and writing supplies, turning his back on the desk and discarding the equivocal amount of books for the archives folks to put back in place. It had been an emotionally heavy day in perspective; the insight Keith gained about  _ oni _ hadn’t been much, but the visuals implied by the descriptions of the Buddhist Hells and imagining his protector going through them for an uncountable amount of centuries had been  _ exhausting, _ to say the least. “Let’s go. I need a shower.”

“Wait…this one...” From the scattered books, the  _ oni _ singled out one of them, his only palm open over the leather cover as if he were feeling the contents of decades old pages. There was no title — _ no, _ there  _ was _ a title, gold foil symbols in a language Keith later identified as Japanese— and it looked like it had been around the forgotten shelves of the library for a very long time, dust coating the top edge. “Can we take this?”

“Huh... My Library ID expired like, three years ago, and it’s closing time; we don’t have time to make a new profile now... Plus I still owe them around twenty bucks in fees. We can come over tomorrow again?”

Could  _ oni _ beg with their eyes? Perhaps. The sad, conforming glint in those steely grey eyes had Keith deciding that there was no way to say no.

  
“Alright,  _ alright, _ ” he grumbled with a frown, grabbing the book with the intent to discreetly shove it inside his bag between one of the tall aisles before leaving, “but your hunch better be right.”


	5. V.

** _V._ **

They made it home a little past sunset, Keith’s stomach asking for food he didn’t have the patience or the supplies in the fridge to prepare. He tossed his bag to the couch and himself right after, landing on his back against the armrest and accepting it as a reasonable resting position for the long hours to come.

The  _ oni _ walked at a slower pace behind him, installing himself on the adjacent couch. “You should eat and then sleep.”

“Why is my private  _ oni _ an alarm clock for all my physiological needs?” He joked with snark, cheek squished against the armrest as he smiled. “Wanna let me know when it’s time to drink water or go take a piss too?”

“If you don’t figure it out yourself, then I must remind you.” The  _ oni _ easily defended himself from the playful bare-foot kick that was thrown at him, the talon harmlessly wrapping around Keith’s ankle to yank him to his lap. Keith contorted himself as he laughed and tried to escape the demon’s grip, the soft energy of their joke filling the space between the two. When he stopped, their eyes locked as if they were programmed to. “I don’t mind it. Looking out for you.”

“‘M sorry. It’s a tough job at times. I’m a mess.” Keith shrugged, naturally falling on the demon’s lap as if it were shaped to accommodate his body. Maybe it was an  _ oni _ thing? Whatever it was, he was glad for it. He was a hundred times comfier than that cheap ass couch for sure. Keith’s head fit just right in the curve of the monster’s shoulder, his only arm around the human, palm open and resting over his hip bone. Closing his eyes for a brief moment had him imagining that he had felt something like that before.

His late dad’s lap as a child, on a sleepless night? Perhaps?

_ Not quite. _

Whatever.

He nuzzled closer—were that even possible—inhaling a scent that felt familiar, his nose and lips tracing a path he felt like he knew to see, up a neck he could swear he had kissed before.  _ How silly _ , he mused, as the exhaustion of a whole day clung to him.

“You’re not a mess, Keith.” Honesty clad those words in a blanket, the thumb that rested just above his waist massaging gentle circles on the spot. He melted into it, hypnotized by the movement, enchanted by the spell cast by the  _ oni _ ’s tender touch.

“We both are, I guess,” Keith concluded, lips stretching in a smile way too close to the demon’s underbite. He noticed how his face became redder, almost merging with the tattooed markings over his cheeks.

“Indeed.”

He wasn’t sure how it would work —with the teeth and all— but Keith was keen on finding out; it began with a short peck that escalated into what he believed to be a kiss. His experience was null but the blood his heart pumped reeked of determination, so he would make that first kiss the  _ best _ . The hand on his waist moved to his face to tilt it upwards, improving the angle of the starlight flavored kiss with a practiced ease. 

It felt like the speed of the ecliptic orbital motion of every planet and natural satellite increased, like everything was moving too fast but also not fast enough. It was a trip and fall, but it was just a kiss and it stung with the aroma of  _ impatience _ .

Keith cursed the requirement to breathe; if he could, he would’ve kept their lips connected, the thirst of what seemed like years finally subsiding into a more tamed necessity. How he missed it, how he missed  _ him _ and his taste,  _ oh _ —

That was an unreasonable line of thought but the absurdity of things wasn’t something he was too interested in exploring when gravity activated its pull on his lower belly, as he was picked up with ease and carried to the bed.

The frame cranked at their combined weight but the sound was deafened by a tongue that knew what it was doing. It ran around his lobe, nibbling teeth picking at the curve of his ear, warmth alerting every nerve in Keith’s system and making him shiver. He craved and beseeched, hips arching upwards in search for some friction, their crotches rubbing together in palpitating urgency.

Clothes were stone barriers and their desperation was the wrecking ball that tore them down, sharp tugs on a plaid shirt and jeans, on a piece of underwear and an ancient loincloth. Being naked before someone else had never felt so reasonable.

But good Lord, the demon was  _ massive _ .

Broad chest and wide shoulders, a dark cutout with the moon as backlight, and even with only one hand he had pinned Keith down without making him feel like he was confined. Those thighs were huge, splattered with brushstrokes of scars to match the ones in his torso, a discarded canvas in the corner of an abandoned atelier. His eyes had darkened and poured over him like liquid metal, bathing him in all the affection and devotion such a creature could hold. His cock —so marvelously  _ thick _ with patterns of veins almost adornishing the volume— was hard and leaking, glistening with what could be eager precum or the demonic equivalent to it.

Marveled and likely hypnotized, Keith decided that his monster was the most beautiful being he had ever laid eyes upon. Their kisses were magical and felt like they crossed all dimensions of time and space, no limitations for the places they could reach together because the Universe and fate would conspire only to have them meeting in every possible reality. 

The demon’s eyes delayed on the ink that had long since been stitched into Keith’s skin —nomeadetely the twin sparrows on each of his hips to match the tattoos his late father also had— in silent admiration. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them before in different occasions where Keith preferred to not use a shirt. The admiration made blood rise to the tips of Keith’s ears. “ _ What _ ?” 

“They suit you,” the  _ oni _ complemented. “Sparrows carry the meaning of loyalty to family or a loved one, and are the proof of long hardships surpassed.”

The human smiled at those words; even in a hazy state, they made sense to him. Pop had told him once that sparrows mate for life and that each of the birds on his chest represented himself and Keith’s mother. Whether that was an actual  _ National Geographic _ fact or just something the old man had invented in the spirit of the moment, he had remained true to his words; James Daniel Kogane had never been with another woman. As for his unknown mum… only God would know. 

“Doesn’t the  _ oni _ mask suit me?” Keith countered with a grin, arching his back to ensure that their bodies touched, chest on chest. It had been the hasty decision to get his neck tattooed that had given him this bond; there was nothing about it to regret.

“Is it selfish of me to say that it does?”

Their shared laugh was private, the tips of their noses rubbing in a gentle caress before their lips united in yet another kiss; the type of kiss that either created thunderstorms or calmed the skies to allow the light through. A union that challenged the natural laws of circumstance and elevated chance above mere luck. 

He shivered when the monster’s tongue touched his, his spine chilled and dick pulsing. He needed it, wanted it, and in all alacrity, he reached for the other’s member, giving it a few pumps and guiding it to his unprepared entrance. 

“I may hurt you,” the  _ oni _ warned as he moved Keith’s hand away, replacing it with two fingers of his own to rub gentle circles around, glazing with his own fluid.

The human didn’t care, not when he was so close. If anything would hurt it would be the lack of something inside him. Still he patiently waited, one finger, two and then three, and it was more than enough to have Keith in despair for the real thing.

“Do it,” he prayed, with a flint in his voice and a spark in his eye.

Upon such demand, there was no prelude or mildness before the rawness of the act: it was the demon’s cock, pressing on his rim, and being swallowed with a little difficulty. He gasped and grasped whatever he could get his sloppy hands on —nails dragging a path from his short white hair down the demon’s wide back only to set on his ass and pull him closer— as the other pushed in between his legs with the confidence of someone who had done it before, countless times,  _ and maybe he had _ .

Time was transcended when two lovers met in the private realm of their intimacy, and centuries of waiting met in one single thrust, deep, assertive. Keith’s own thoughts didn’t connect, like loose constellations in a foreign night sky, thus he decided to stop trying to make sense of anything other but the rhythm in which the  _ oni _ ’s hips rolled to meet his. Flesh on flesh was like a collision of stars, where the cosmos scattered and were pieced back together by nothing but the intensity of their bond.

And what a bond the two shared.

Keith sensed that he was about to burst. The demon cooed him and hushed him with whispers in his ear — _ Shhh, it’s okay, don’t worry, you’re doing so good, that’s it, my love, hold your legs up like that, so perfect, so beautiful _ — to soothe him, an effect worthy of a spell. His orgasm came in waves, ondulations of pleasure that had him pinned down, convulsing in the arms of the  _ oni _ like there was nothing else in the world.

In history.

In the past and in the future.

Just them.

* * *

“Have you ever been bound to anyone else?” Keith questioned the morning after, lazy Arizona sun embracing the whole room in a warm light, his head leaning against a bare, gently shifting chest. The breathing process wasn’t necessary for the  _ oni _ , but it had a way to soothe his presence around Keith, so he forced it; under the pressure of the question, however, it momentarily stilled like waters of an undisturbed lake.

Keith picked at his nails as a way to battle his curiosity and keep himself from asking further. When the white haired man slapped his hand to stop him from nibbling on his cuticles, he continued, “Touchy subject?”

“You could say so.”

Hm. Interesting piece of intel he had acquired. He shifted in bed so that he’d be facing the demon, swinging one leg over him to straddle the  _ oni _ ’s lap. His arms immediately tangled around his lover’s neck, his breath hissing over skin that had been tormented by unimaginable horrors. It was futile to wish he could blow away the pain, but he did so anyway. 

“Do you kiss everybody you’re soulbound to?”

“Of course not.” His voice became aggravated, nose wrinkling like that of a ferocious bunny. Keith carded his fingers through the white strands of hair, combing the forelock only to have it flopping back to his forehead, a gentle caress to soothe the  _ oni _ ’s false anger. “... It’s not… like that.”

A hum of little patience. Keith wanted to know  _ everything _ . There was history, patchy even within his own clouded mind, a linen parchment open to be read if not for the splattered ink. Each scar held a tale, a narrative of a chamber of horrors beyond belief.

All of him was beyond belief, but as Keith’s lips trailed over centuries old wounds, the  _ oni _ felt compelled to tilt his head back and welcome more of the harmless caresses. His claws slipped under a plaid shirt to meet sun-warmed skin. Whatever there was to unfold, time would tell.

_ Patience yields focus _ , or something like that. He remembered those words as if they had been said a long time ago, maybe when he was a child, or maybe on TV at some point.

Keith had apparently said those words out loud—or maybe the  _ oni _ had the power to read through his soul—but the horrific look on the demon’s face made him frown.

“Hey, is something wrong…?”

“The book,” was the reply. “Where is it?”

He was almost shoved aside in the bed as if he weighed as much as a rag doll, the monster reached for the bag and retrieved the book and watched it with the severity of a punisher, as if the cover would reveal all the secrets within the yellow time-tainted pages.

“You do know you have to open a book to read it?” Keith provided with irony from the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m aware.”

“So? Get on with it.” The human urged. “Don’t you wanna know what drew you to it?”

“I…do. I’m just…sensing something.”

“Like… _ something, _ something?” Keith tried to scout for any other presence, another fiend who may want to attack them, but that wasn’t the case. His short experience hadn’t made a master detector out of him just yet, but the sudden mood change was definitely about the book. He scooted closer on the couch, joining the  _ oni _ in his attempt to carve a hole into the cover with their own eyes. He bounced his leg, bit on his lip, sighed loudly. Patience thinned in a gradual manner until there was none left.

“... Jesus Christ, do you want  _ me _ to do it?” Keith pressed.

“No.” The white haired monster barely moved an inch. It took a while until he blinked and Keith groaned.

“Look.” He was about to go into a rant about how it hurt less to remove a band-aid at once than slowly pulling it, but a look into his protector’s eyes had him adapting his speech to the raw, susceptible anxiety he saw there.

It was an emotion Keith was very familiar with and he was left to wonder how long — _ years, decades, centuries? _ — the demon had spent looking for anything close to an identity? Would he truly discover something or was it just another disappointment to add to the list? Would the discovery bring him any peace?

Was a demon worthy of having any peace of mind?

Momentarily, Keith’s astral projection was taken back to the hazy memory of when he, as the only remaining member of the Kogane family, was called in to recognize the corpse of his father. A twelve year old child, in a cramped room that smelled of cold and heaviness, of disinfectant and pungent rottenness that clung to clothing and the walls of the entire building. 

He had barely managed to breathe with the odor, let alone move in that cold morgue to grip the white sheet and pull it back. He took so long because he was thinking of the last time he had seen his father smile. He took so long to react that the officer did it for him and tainted the last memory he held so dear, of a smile lost to time and shock and a fire downtown.

Nothing would change what he would see. He knew it at the time, he knew there was nothing he could do to alter the outcome. He couldn’t switch the deceased underneath that sheet, but that time of reflection, realization, and mental preparation were  _ his _ .  _ They were his and they were stolen. _

With a deep breath and a clearer mind, he proceeded, voice leveled if not for the occasional hiccup and heart just about to pour.

“Look…the answers we need are in there, at our reach. But they’re not going anywhere, so… prepare yourself. You have time.”

The  _ oni _ nodded as if he had gathered a deeper wisdom than intended from what Keith had said. His eyes of hurricanes and typhoons drifted to the cover and then back at the human, only to dart back down to the carpet. 

“It’s…not for me,” the  _ oni _ explained, his hand hovering Keith’s knee before settling on it with a gentle massage. “It’s for you.”

At that Keith’s eyebrows knitted into a frown, a question rolling around his tongue but never quite vocalizing into words.

“I’m not a psychic and I’m not certain of what we will find in these pages. But, I know it’s something that both of us either need to know, or were never meant to discover. Like a childhood secret neither of us was supposed to remember.”

It was just a book, it wasn’t even written in English, some Oriental symbols carved in long vanished gold where the title would have been. There was history in the way some pages were bent, in the fingerprints that were left on the cover, in the eyes that deciphered the messages of the book in the past, either out of curiosity or with the intent of finding something they once sought.

The hand on Keith’s leg irradiated a warmth that felt like home, the demon’s voice echoed in his head, traveling through his nerves and hitting him on all his sensitive spots. It sounded like utter nonsense, but deep down, not quite. It wasn’t the craziest thing he had heard in the past months, for sure. The  _ oni _ ’s disquietude infected Keith’s heart as well, a virus that swelled his chest and made his stomach turn in expectation. 

Answers were within reach. Open the book. Face whatever consequences come with it. Done. 

“Whatever happens, we’re like…together in this, right?” Keith rested his own hand over the  _ oni _ ’s, almost expecting to feel a pulse on the thick veins, as if he ever had. He could have sworn he had.

“Always, my love.” A single word and a hand facing up, fingers with long claws that intertwined with Keith’s own in a comfort that held him humbly with the density of a promise and the hint of a  _ dejà vu _ . He shook his head in an attempt to loosen the ache that suddenly clung to his frontal lobe. Granted, it only worsened, but the matter at hand held a little more importance over something an Advil or two could solve.

The two opened the book with a combined effort, not because the cover weighed on them, but because it felt a little like lifting a lid to uncover secrets deeper than either of them knew. 

Old pages were filled with what looked like hasty handwriting, a journal almost, and Keith had to squint to try to make some sense of the symbols but deep down, he may have understood them. 

His heart, twinging inside his chest, sure did. 

In comparison, the  _ oni _ ’s eyes scanned the writings at an inhuman speed, pupils darting up and down from right to left, swallowing the contents and deciphering them with an expertise gained over the years of knowing the language. His expression barely shifted from the thin line that pressed his lips together, the layer of asperity of a determined man with a mission that sent a chill down Keith’s spine.

The pages were turned gradually and they learned that some were intentionally left blank, others were torn, but a few of them contained images of places, clothes, and customs Keith didn’t think he’d be familiar with if not for movies. The history nerd in him may have thrived for a while, but whatever heart rate was considered regular was eventually replaced with unhealthily high peaks that stopped him from breathing.

One of the images consisted of a realistic portrayal of a high-cheeked warrior, a master of the ways of the sword and member of a powerful military caste in feudal Japan—a  _ samurai _ —accompanied by two others with the same attire. 

Right next to the rectangular image, an uneven text that went into detail about the premise of a war.

“The  _ Genpei  _ War,” the monster next to him translated, voice heavy in what could be grief. “W— _ I _ was there. It was the climax of a conflict of decades between two clans over dominance of the Imperial court and consequently, over the whole country. It was the war that marked the rise to power of the samurai as a warrior class.”

Keith knew next to nothing about Japanese history save a few key points that were featured in movies, and said war was not one of them, not that he could immediately remember, but like any war, there was certainly nothing pretty about it. He pulled the book to his lap, head lowering over the page as he ran his thumb across the features of the samurai, eyes sharp like the tip of the  _ katana _ he carried at his waist. His hair was pitch black in the painting, the eyes docile yet aware, lips quirked at the corner yet tense, but there was no denying.

“This…this is you, isn’t it?”

The demon weaved and lowered his head, memories unfolding in flesh before his eyes —had he an ability to breathe he would have lost it to shock.

Memories were a curse more often than a blessing when time worked against those who had lost more than one lifetime to time. Considering what sinners go through in Hell, it’s almost merciful for them to lose every memory of a life before the pain. When said memories return, however—b _ ecause you never truly forget, no, there are blueprints of life all over one’s soul that not even time can erase with the shrinking of a tide or the dragging of a cloud or the melting snow on dirty sidewalks _ —there’s nothing that can save them from regret. From learning what they missed out on and the people who were left behind.

Keith…he understood. His eyes drifted back to the image. The armor was remarkable, a piece of history that almost felt palpable, an extraordinarily construction of complex craftsmanship and lacquer work, of wood and forged steel and superb textiles. A name rolled around his tongue as he inspected the hasty  _ hiragana _ under the painting; he didn’t understand any of it, but the  _ samurai _ ’s corner smile made him think of a noble metal, one that didn’t rust or tarnish. Not even time had wiped the platinum away from that man.

“Shirogane Takashi.” Keith read in a nearly mute whisper, his own lips redrawing the angle he saw in the image he lost himself in, “ _ Shiro _ .”

“Keith,” the demon called beside him, consternation deepening his timbre and darkening his features. “That’s my name.”

“Hm?”

“You just said it. My name.”

With a pounding heart and shortness of breath, Keith gulped, eyes burning into the  _ oni _ ’s. “ _ Shiro. _ ”  _ Yes, Shiro, that was it, it was Shiro, his Shiro, but  _ ** _how_ ** _ ?  _ How could he, a non-speaker of the language, have known? The name fit him so well, with those silver eyes and silver resolve, an armor of platinum to shield him from misfortune, but  ** _how did he know?_ **

“Shiro…”

“It’s alrigh—”

“No, it’s NOT alright!” he spat, the book falling open on the same page on the makeshift coffee table —a pile of old books holding up a round acrylic top he had once found in a junkyard.

A hesitant sigh. “Keith. Look at the picture again.”

The human almost didn’t want to. Confusion blurred his vision, made him dizzy and upset all the way to his stomach. What was there left to see that he hadn’t noticed before? Did he really want to see it? A buzzing rose to his ears, but he looked down at the page nonetheless.

“Look at this man,” the oni— _ Shiro _ , good Lord—pointed at the individual in question. In comparison to the samurai who stood before him, this one was smaller, apparently less experienced and far less equipped. A rash boy in the middle of two men, it seemed, a scar cutting his cheek in the same place where Keith’s own face was marked—

No.  _ No, it couldn’t be. _

“Keith, stay with me, please. That’s  _ Akira. _ Do you know what I told him that day, for the first time?”

How the  _ FUCK _ could he know?! That painting was eight hundred years old; it was 1988, not the middle of the 1180’s, it didn’t make sense. Keith could feel his head burning, his heart skipping beats, his mind connecting, and searching deep in his DNA the answer to a question he should not have known.

_ Patience yields focus. _

“P-Patience…”

“— _ yields focus _ , that’s right, my love. And do you know why you know that?”

“Shiro…” Keith staggered away, his spirit abandoning his body in a metaphorical sense, the strength his legs needed to hold him up completely vanishing. He was caught in Shiro’s arms before he could hit his head—or perhaps he had already hit his head and was bleeding out in the corner of his apartment, delusional about different times, losing consciousness as his life slipped through a hole in his head...

“Keith. Stay with me.”

_ Akira. _

_ Stay with me…  _

** _I can’t lose you again._ **

* * *

It was a dread to open his eyes; they felt crusty and heavy after hours of a half-sleep, and he didn’t feel like he had had any actual rest. Had he had a nightmare? A succession of horrible dreams that made him sweat?

There was a man in a  _ kimono _ and a lot of blood on his right side. A missing arm and a kiss on his forehead.  _ Patience yields focus,  _ but he ignored that. Then there were arrows flying and a sword twisted in his gut, followed by panic and realization.  _ He was dying.  _

Seeing the  _ oni _ ’s chest in the cuddling position he found himself in reminded him that those hideous things could have been memories instead.  _ Shiro. _

_ What the fuck... _

“Keith,” Shiro called, voice calm and as always calm. The human scattered away, only so that he could have eyes on the other. The demon allowed it and didn’t move.

“You’d better start explaining some shit, or I  _ swear _ —”

“Don’t you get it? You read it before. An  _ oni _ is someone who used to be human but did something so vile that they were doomed to walk across the several levels of the Buddhist Hells to be deformed by the physical consequences of their actions. We are  _ not _ kind. Not meant to love or  _ be _ loved for the sins of the past.”

The question rolled around Keith’s tongue for a long minute. He wanted the answer, but the blocked part of memories that were his but didn’t belong to him resisted. “What did you do?” 

“My sin…was murdering you.”

Nausea rose up to his mouth, bitter bile taking him back to a mind space he didn’t know he had. It hurt,  _ it hurt _ , there were tears in his vision and sweat on his brown, a twinge on his stomach and the twist of a sword on his flesh, Shiro,  _ Shiro _ ,  ** _SHIRO_ ** —

“Keith. My love.” The  _ oni _ ’s voice grounded him, his single arm shaking Keith back to the reality before him. “We don’t have to do this.”

“No…Tell me more.”

There was some hesitance before he obliged, receiving Keith against his torso in a loose hug.

“Alright…I first met Akira centuries ago. A year or two before the Genpei War. He was to become a samurai, but his stance was all wrong; he was truly effective in combat because he relied on the element of surprise, but was sloppy in technique. So I was to train him,” he explained, each word painfully pulled out of his memory with a crowbar. It pained him still, that much was obvious even without the tears at the corners of his eyes. “I loved him...with every breath I breathed.”

Keith… _ knew _ that. Deep in his DNA, in the remnants of his ancestor, he knew that it was true.

“I lost my arm in one of the first battles. It would have ruined me as a warrior but he never gave up on me. He even ventured into the battlefield by himself with ideals of vengeance. I followed him, blinded by pain, desperate to find him, single-handed…It drove me to madness, to the point where I sliced whoever stood in my way…Akira included. It was too late when I noticed it was him, and I wasted no time in taking my own life.”

The first precept of Buddhism, as Keith read that time in the library, is to refrain from the destruction of life, including one's self. Suicide was religiously looked down upon. If someone were to commit suicide in anger or despair, they may be sent to a sorrowful realm due to negative final thoughts. 

The shaping of an  _ oni _ .

“After that, everything’s blank. But the next time I saw Akira…things had changed. Not just in my country, and myself—with the black hair gone white, the horns, and these markings—but in Akira as well. I was too thrilled to see him again that it didn’t matter to me, she was so stun—”

“Huh?” Keith interrupted without thinking, frowning at the demon. “I’m sorry,  _ ‘she’ _ ?”

“Yes. Akira’s second incarnation was a woman.”  _ Well, then.  _ That took a while to process in Keith’s head but he nodded at Shiro to continue; it wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened that day. “She didn’t remember me at all and I didn’t expect her to, but our paths crossed and love seemed to be stitched into our beings. Our endeavours… _ escalated _ . She became pregnant…but whatever dark creature I implanted in her...ended up killing her.” 

The abdominal pain that cut through his middle made Keith bend forward on reflex; the tear that ran down his cheek belonged to someone else, a Pavlovian response to the leftovers of a memory.  _ I want her, Shiro. She’s  _ ** _ours_ ** _ , she’s ours and I want to deliver her, I don’t care if the labor will kill me, I love you and I love her too _ —

“The following reincarnation was the Akira who travelled to America, and died as a consequence of a prolonged disease. After that, I was summoned by Keith Kogane, during World War Two. A pilot in the Allied forces. You can guess how that ended up.” A pained sigh. “I begged him not to get into that plane, but you couldn’t tell him anything.”

That seemed to be a common point between all the reincarnations; stubbornness was a trait that traveled across descendants. His eyes met a thunderstorm in Shiro’s. 

“And now  _ you _ ,” the  _ oni _ said, clawed hand raising to caress Keith’s face. 

_ And now me. _

Keith mused a little about the number of times Shiro had lost him. The cruel number of times they had lost each other. It was like he could feel every single one of those times in his bones; the bleeding wound, the lethal delivery, the corroding disease, the pilot error. Each an attempt to reach the happiness they deserved but never quite grasping. A false sensation of winning whenever they met again that slipped through theirs fingers every single time. A game they were forced to play with loaded dice that doomed them both to lose from the beginning.

_ And what about me? _

It felt so natural for Keith to love him in the present, so  _ right _ . As if he had been anxiously waiting in dormancy all of his life, or  _ lives _ , for a reality where they could be together. Would this be the one? Were it up to him, it definitely would.

Scooting closer, Keith wrapped his arms around the  _ oni _ ’s neck, pulling him into an embrace with the combined strength of all of his ancestors, the ones before him who had lost and  _ been _ lost. The force of the kiss that followed carried the will and determination of the past, current and future lives. For Akira would always, always find a way back to Takashi Shirogane.

“I’m glad you found me.”

“And I will,” Shiro promised. “As many times as it takes.”


End file.
